Rejected Me? I Married the Alpha King! novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Rejected Before Nine Packs
At the Claiming Night, Brant rejects Maxine in front of nine packs for Sylvie while her father nods, she steps out, and on the steps the Alpha King offers to marry her within eleven days.
Brant Prentiss tapped his champagne glass with his ring, and the whole Moon Hall went quiet.
It was Claiming Night at the Crown Keep.
Nine packs stood under the chandeliers, and every heir had brought the mate he had marked that year to be seen by the Alpha King.
I stood beside Brant with my hand on his arm, the way I had at every pack event for fourteen months.
That morning he had kissed my forehead in the car and said, "Nothing happens tonight except the King nods at you. I'm not going anywhere."
Ten minutes before, Sylvie Dray had zipped me into my green dress in the powder room.
She was a Redmoon girl who had been helping with the seating chart all week.
She pinned a loose strap on my shoulder and said it was the right color for me.
Then she said Brant talked about me all the time, and she smiled at my reflection.
I had thanked her.
Out in the hall, nine packs were breathing each other in, reading who was happy and who was nervous.
Nobody was breathing me in.
I smelled like nothing, and everyone in that room had known it since I was a child.
My mother had died when I was four, and my father, Alpha Kenneth Garrow, had raised me on one theory: I was a flaw, and he would manage it.
Every morning since I was twelve, I had drunk a small cup of grey, bitter tea from our clinic.
For nine years my best friend Junie had been the one to hand it to me.
My father always stood in the doorway until I finished it.
He had stood there that morning too.
Now he was at the Garrow table with a drink in his hand, watching me.
Brant turned to face the room, and his hand slid off mine.
"I want everyone to hear this from me," he said.
Somebody near the front lifted a phone.
"Maxine, you've been good to me, and I won't lie to you in front of the packs."
My stomach went cold.
"I, Brant Prentiss, heir of Redmoon, reject you, Maxine Garrow, as my mate."
The mark on my left shoulder, where he had bitten me, went white-hot.
It felt like someone had pressed a hot iron through my dress.
I did not make a sound.
"I can't claim what I can't smell," Brant said, softer, like he was being kind.
"At the Spring Run, Sylvie's scent hit me like a wall. I can't pretend it didn't."
Sylvie stepped up beside him, and her cheeks went pink.
She slid her hand into his, and the wolves nearest them breathed in and nodded.
They could smell it.
Everyone could smell it except me.
I looked across the hall for my father.
He did not look surprised.
He gave me one small nod.
A woman near the buffet whispered, "Poor thing, at least he said it fast."
A man laughed, and then the whole room was murmuring.
I had spent three days planning my route through this hall, because I always find the exits first.
The side door by the coat rack was just across the hall.
Brant was still looking at me, waiting for me to cry.
"Thank you for saying it out loud," I told him.
"It saves me asking."
His smile slipped.
I took my hand off his sleeve, and I smoothed the front of my dress.
My shoulder was screaming, and I held my back straight anyway.
So I stepped out.
I walked past the staring packs, past Junie's white face at the bar, past my father's table.
I did not look at him again.
The cold outside hit me.
I made it to the bottom of the stone steps before my knees began to shake, and I sat down on the bottom one in my good green dress.
Footsteps came out of the doorway behind me.
They were slow and heavy, and they stopped one step above me.
I knew who it was without turning, because only one man in that hall had not spoken all night.
Elias Harrow, the Alpha King, had watched the whole thing from the high table with his glass untouched.
He sat down one step above me, far enough away to leave me room.
"Miss Garrow."
"Your Majesty."
"Elias is fine." He was looking at the dark lake, not at me.
"The council has a law. If the Crown has no wife sealed by scent at the Blood Moon Gathering, the council may seat a regent."
"That sounds like your problem."
"It is. The Blood Moon is in eleven days."
He turned his head then, and his eyes were dark and steady.
"Brant Prentiss's father sits on that council, and he wants the regency for his house."
I pressed my hand against my burning shoulder.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you just walked out of that hall like it was your own idea," Elias said.
"And I need a wife, and you need somewhere to stand."
My heart was pounding.
"Marry me before the Blood Moon, Maxine, and I'll stand beside you while you take every bit of it back."
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